Neil Hewitt posted the following comment after my post of 19th May titled Just Released on Parks and Weeds:
“My suggestion … is that public administration of protected area estate be removed of its exclusionary influences to fair trade, by requiring that conservation management is completely self-funded from the natural and cultural resources of the reserve without subsidy or budgetary allocation.
Afterall, many were viable working properties before acquisition under the pretence of conservation and if Australia is serious about conserving its natural and cultural wealth across all tenures, a conservation economy will need to be cultivated.”
There is also an argument that sustainable harvesting programs focused on native species can enhance conservation.
Bob Beale and Mike Archer argued in the Australian Financial Review (23-28th December 2004) that mallee fowl and giant bustard would not be “facing oblivion if we served them up for Christmas dinner instead of Asian chicken and North American turkey”. Crocodile populations in northern Australia have increased from less than 5,000 in the early 1970s to over 70,000 today. This increase coincided with the development of croc farms for meat and skin export as well as a ban on shooting.
What has happened to the concept of growing the trade in Kangaroo meat? A SW Queensland grazier has suggested that without the kangaroos on his property he could probably lift his stocking rate by a quarter. Is he exaggerating? He has also suggested I write something about the value of harvesting native animals.
And I received an email from NSW landholder Kathryn Varrica asking for information about “non regulatory (as in “lock ’em up)” solutions for nature conservation.
Your thoughts?
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Sure we can have Lyrebird soup for starters and then a nice pretty faced wallaby steak for main course with a Wollami Pine centrepiece for the table.
I think that this is really not the thing to do. Conservation should be totally independant of anu commercial interest.
Ender, Yours is perhaps an emotional response – that conservation should be independent of commercial interest? Maybe the reality is that with commerce there is a better chance for real protection, for real conservation?
Why is the salary of a national park ranger appropriate and a conservation manager of privately-owned world heritage estate, inapproriate?
Why are commercial tour operators on National Parks subsidised so substantially and on non-government lands, not at all?
Subsidisation of tourism and conservation on a public versus private land basis undermines the potential for an ecotourism economy off-reserve and by implication forces landholders to sustain their families, now and into the future, through land-uses that are not disadvantaged by the exclusionary influences of unfair trade.
No it is not an emotional response. Just a reaction to the notion that the free market is better idea. Not all things are done better with free markets and this is one of them. I would like the protectors of our endangered species to be able to make decisions that are not profit related. In short I would like to keep the bean counters out of it.
Revenues should supplement parks budgets not replace them. I do not mind my taxes going to this cause.
Jennifer
Here is a fact – Wooleen Station, in the Murchison District of WA (I am going there tomorrow for two weeks work) has diarised records since it started.
In the early days Kangaroo numbers were very low, in symbiotic association with available water supplies.
When the farmers arrived and created extra water wells and bores, the native wildlife population literally exploded, so that now their environmental damage being done by Roos’ Emu’s etc is significant.
Roderick the explorer when walking up the river names after him, only saw 3 kangaroos from walking from Lake Wooleen to the headwaters of the Roderick River. FACT.
Woolen is infested with kangaroos and goats to boot, as well as enormous numbers of emus.
However the Pollocks are closing down bores to cull the roo numbers.
Ender, I think Neil Hewitt it is about private enterprise, but not necessarily “bean counters”?
Also, while you and I might not mind our taxes going to maintain National Parks, the amount of money getting through is not enough.
Also, also, in the end I am not totally convinced that private enterprise could properly protect all our parks/animals/environments – but we need to explore options because the current approach is inadequate/not working.
Louis, Have fun at Wooleen Station. Can they make any money out of the Kangaroos they will be culling? I would be interested to know.
While I was in Tassie I didn’t make it to the Savage River – maybe next time.
Loius – this is called the balance of nature – usually human intervention stuffs thing up.
Interesting argument, should the monopoly on “Public Lands” currently enjoyed by National Parks be subject to scrutiny by the ACCC?
My experience working over the last year with NSW National Parks is that they are stuck in an ideological time warp (money=evil). Its not their land, they arent citizens, its mine.
Ender,
I don’t actually believe in a ‘balance of nature’ as such. This idea underpins modern enviornmentalism but I suggest it is an outdated concept – not generally applicable. For me ecosystems and landscapes are dynamic. How they are managed will often determine the species mix. I am concerned about the current mangement/lack of, with respect to our vast rangeland areas.
Given your particular interest in climate change I will add, dramatic climate change has often been a driver for the evolution of life on earth – generating biodiversity. Indeed many of our plant and animal species are naturally rare because they are relics of past times with different environments. Their conservation may require active management.
Many of our entrenched bureaucratic attitudes are also relics of past times and I wonder about the division that separates those with access to administrative opportunities and resources from those without, particularly in terms of our gaoler/convict origins.
Australia’s environmental decision-making is supposed to be bound by the recognition that environmental concerns and impacts respect neither physical nor political boundaries, and yet Australia departmentalises and jurisdiction-alises its official responses.
The effective integration of economic and environmental considerations would enhance Australia’s capacity for strong, growing and diversified economies and yet the succession of undermined rural economies in the name of the environment increases as a matter of metropolitan obsession.
Environmental measures adopted are supposed to be cost-effective and not disproportionate to the significance of the environmental problems being addressed and yet it is undisputed that the protected area estate (alone) is appallingly under-resourced.
I believe Australia’s long-term interests and international competitiveness will be best-served by a private-sector led economy with minimal government intervention in our every day lives.
I long for the economic relief of the unbearable burden of bureaucracy and conservation management is merely another bastion of ineptitude and inefficiency.
Jennifer – Nature is dynamic as you suggest. Previously species could cope with change by moving or adapting. Both of these options require time. In the past upheavals over short time periods produced mass extinctions where the natural balance was dramatically upset over a short time – disturbing the balance. Other less violent upheavals took place over millions of years and species had time to adapt or move or die out.
What humans do is destroy natural habitats, introduce new predators, and put barriers to movement in the way of species. We do this on a far too short a time scale for a lot of species to adapt. Some thrive however they are ususally the flexible adaptors – most don’t.
Balances have grown up over millenia and they usually change slowly over millenia. The one with the kangaroos was a web tuned to least available resource with kangaroos able to regulate their fertility. When water was plentiful – suprise surprise – the kangaroos etc exploded and became a problem because we, over a short period of time, made a scarce resource plentiful with no other checks and balances.
If you want to talk natural climate change then talk in millenia – we are forcing global climate change, with CO2, in an short time period which in the past lead to extinctions. Have a look at the new work on the Permian. Let us hope the next extinction spares us.
Ender your statement “Balances have grown up over millenia and they usually change slowly over millenia” is only your opinion. Look at the ubiquitous cane toad, its introduction into QLD in the 1930’s heralded widespread extinction of native species.
Today those species (except the quoll) have adapted and numbers are rebuilding.
Amazing.
Rog – I think the operative words here are “except the Quoll” Also this is not the sum total of the animals that have not adapted to the cane toad.
Also it is not only my opinion. There are always exceptions that do not prove the general trend. Destruction of habitat is probably the most damaging thing we do.
I reckon the biggest destroyers of habitat on a per hectare basis over the last few year would have been feral fires (particularly January 2003 fires) and vegetation thickening/woody weed encroachment (particularly in the rangelands of western NSW and Queensland). Anybody have any comparative figures?
Ender states, “I would like the protectors of our endangered species to be able to make decisions that are not profit related”.
Have you ever noticed when land of any other tenure is acquired for incorporation into National Park (NP) (or ‘protected’, according to mass media) how frequently it is regaled as the ‘creation’ of a wildlife corridor?
If it was removed of obstructive fencing or extensively revegetated, its wildlife thoroughfare status might alter, but when it is merely changed of name upon title, it is ecological dynamics are exactly as they were before.
The Southern Casssowary is an (EPBC) endangered species. Its population, according to our ‘protectors’, was 2500 in the mid-1990’s and is now 1200.
If more than half of Australia’s cassowary population was lost over the past decade, there should be a royal commission.
But don’t be alarmed, when a cassowary is killed, whether from car strike or dog attack, it makes headline news and I can assure all readers that there have been around ten such headlines in as many years. What isn’t reported,however, is the dramatic population decline from 60,000 competing feral pigs provided with the highest order of protection by the very same ‘protectors’ of our endangered species.
The Daintree Cape Tribulation rainforest is regarded as the most biologically diverse section of the Wet Tropics World Heritage area. It is reiteratively described as Australia’s only extensive rainforest continuum linking coastal lowlands with upland assemblages in an essentially undisturbed ecological interaction.
‘Expert’ opinion proclaims that only 54 adult cassowaries can be sustained by the area’s available habitat – which constitutes about 10% of the total Wet Tropics World Heritage estate.
A conservative extrapolation, based on relative resources, would indicate a total population of about 540 birds, which is approximately one-third the population of Giant Panda in the wild.
Each bird shares its isolated territory with 200 pigs and it has been estimated that such an impost requires five times the native territory for each bird. Put another way, if our ‘protectors’ eradicated feral pigs from the Daintree Cape Tribulation rainforest, the cassowary population would increase by five times.
This should be all the motivation that is needed to justify eradication, but instead, in 2002, the Qld. Govt. legislated the Land Protection (Pest and Stock Route Management) Act, which requires all landholders in Queensland, except those reserved for ‘protection (‘specifically, ‘the State’), to eradicate feral pigs.
They take sanctuary in NP, intelligent animals that they are, and in direct consequense, the endangered Southern Cassowary is driven assuredly to the brink of extinction.
Hi, Jennifer
I’m ffom Madagascar, enjoyed to know your site, I’ll speak ore next time. Bye.